Retreat - Day Four!

What fun we're having at the retreat. We have figured that one of us needs to buy a big house in the country - they say it should be me! And then I'll just run retreats the entire time. That could work - I'd love to be able to sew the entire day away - ALL day, EVERY day!   What boggles my mind is that we never seem to run out of stuff to sew. EVER!

What I need to learn is to bring less stuff.  I know - I said it all along, but Tish came with ONE laundry basket. And she didn't run out of stuff to sew!  I pulled stuff from my two "urgent" bags and one from the non-urgent. I won't even finish all that is in those two urgent bags. But here's the thing - the other stuff is prepped and ready to sew. I will keep those bags out and just keep plugging away at them so there is NOTHING sitting around that needs to be sewn. Like that is to happen!  But a little bit every day and I know I'll be amazed at how much gets done!

I'm very happy - no, I'm ECSTATIC and jumping up and down that I finally finished something that took two years to complete.  I'm working on Vintage Moments by Marsha McCloskey.

Vintage Moments by Marsha  McCloskey

Actually I'm teaching the quilt for the second time. I thought I would be creative and use a striped fabric for the stars - eight pointed stars and so to use the striped fabric properly - all those stars (and there are 17 of them) had to be fussy cut.  If you follow this blog, you remember my fancy fussy cutting technique.

At the last retreat, Ronda very quietly sat in the dining room with me and next thing I knew, her 16 stars  were done!  The stars are needed for one of the borders and pretty much as soon as we get back to class in September, I think those blocks are going to be needed as I really really want to get this quilt finished.  It meant that I had to suck it up and work on those blocks.  A very slow process as none of them could be chain pieced - each one had many individual seams. And I had to develop a system as I went to sew a couple of components together and OH SNAP - I had sewn half of the points in and half in the opposite direction.

SIXTEEN - eight-pointed star blocks - DONE!

I have to say that getting those blocks done was like getting a big monkey off my back!  I think there is a smidgen of applique left that I have to do and then I should be home free in getting this quilt top done!!!  As they say for Lotto 649 - Imagine the Freedom!!!   Now how do I win that Lottery so I can buy the retreat house so I can sew all day, every day?

I also got a tote bag done and worked on some other things now that I was able to get some FAST sewing in. I do have FOUR more things that I would like to finish before we leave today. Check out is at 3 PM so I think I'm good.  And I have a feeling that whatever time we leave today, that we are going to get stuck in traffic on the way home.  I guess next time, we should plan to come up on Friday morning and leave on Tuesday.  Never thought of that!

Instead of going out on my bike, I decided to take a walk.  Wow - the main road near the house was like a super highway. A lot of traffic.  We had been talking about geocaching the night before and Ronda had discovered one near the house - well it was 1.6 KM away.  So I walked there.  Now there is nothing like trying to be non-conspicuous and trying to find a break in the traffic to dive into the waist-high grass to find a stupid geocache and then to find the appropriate moment to pop out of the waist-high grass and look like nothing happened!  I did find the cache but it was full of ants so I did not sign the log book.

And on that note, I'm off to fire up the sewing machine - the rest are still dead to the world. There is a lot I want to get sewn and I will slowly walk all those bags back to the car. Yes - I did unload them all in the event that something wasn't going to like the heat that we've had. - something like chocolate, although, I think it is going to be hot again today.  It's overcast and I don't think I'll go out on my bike today - giving my knee a rest.

Have a super day!!!!

Ciao!!!!